Mike Leghorn to my reply:

>>>I can't help but believe that someone must have thought of the possible
>>>connection between Mozart's Jupiter and Beethoven's Late Quartets.
>>
>>Those works (Mozart's and Beethoven's) don't share the same motive!!!.  So
>>tell me someone please where the connection lies?
>
>I believe that they do share the same motive.  As I've pointed out before,
>the similarity is most striking when you compare measures 68 through 75 of
>the 3rd mvt of the Jupiter with the the opening measures of Beethoven's op.
>132.

Let's clear this as much as we can:

Motive: "a unit that contains one or more characteristic features of
intervals or rhythm..."

Variation: "a repetition with changes in one or more of the characteristic
features of a motive, phrase or larger units."

(Arnold Schoenberg: "Models for Beginners in Composition", G.  Schirmer
Inc.  1943.  Spanish edition by Ricordi Americana, Buenos Aires 1985, p.15,
the re-translation is unfortunately mine)

So, we are talking here about three musical units:

a) Beethoven op. 132 beginning: ascending semitone-- ascending minor 6th
-- descending semitone

b) Mozart n.  41 3rd mov: ascending semitone -- ascending minor third --
descending semitone

c) Mozart n.  41 finale: ascending major 2nd-- ascending minor 3rd.--
descending semitone

They have in common the same melodic direction, but only a final descending
semitone.  Agree: there's a remarkable similarity.

According to you, a), b) and c) are "the same motive".  Well, I hope you
understand that *they are not* the same, though the similarity between them
is actual.  One could say that both a) and b) are variations of c).  Well,
it may be, but who knows?.  By "variation" is intended an *intentional*
process of transformation (we are talking here about composition, ain't?).
In a short 4 note chain, the mere coincidence may had muchto do.  I mean:
perhaps Mozart and Beethoven did never connect consciously those little
chains, being their shared features just a coincidence.  There's no way to
know it.

>Why would Beethoven take a motif from Mozart to open these three quartets
>(and even use the same key)? As I've suggested, he was foretelling -- and
>so was Mozart in the trio of the Jupiter.  Mozart's first introduction of
>the motif in the Jupiter is in the trio of the third movmement.  The finale
>of the Jupiter ended up being Mozart's full realization of that motif.
>Beethoven took the same motif, right out of the trio, and came up with a
>completely different realization.

This is simply wrong, because Beethoven's motive doesn't match with
those four notes of Mozart's trio (see above).  They sound different,
they have a different taste etc.  Besides, that theory of "foretelling"
in a classical symphony....  When Mozart wants to "foretell" (just as in
the Overture of Don Giovanni), he takes care of making it clear enough,
not simply placing a derivation of 4 notes hidden in a trio section.

>The second movement is the most ghostly.  If this were a fleeting image
>of music, who would be the composer? Mozart perhaps? Well, I thought I
>heard some similarities between it and the third movement of the Jupiter
>-- the rhythm of the themes in both 'A' and 'B' (i.e.  trio) sections.
>Then I asked myself: Mozart uses the 4-note motif (with a 4-note answer)
>in the middle of the trio -- does Beethoven do the same thing? Upon
>listening, I discovered that he does indeed use the 4-note motif in the
>middle of the trio section of the 2nd movement.  (These are my favorite
>kind of discoveries -- the kind that gradually unfold).

You are talking about bars 206-212.  OK, there's a "variation" more or
less similar to the motive of the beginning.  However, I think that you
have definitively a problem with minor seconds: wherever you hear two of
them consecutive, you point the famous motive.  OK, that's your opinion.
I think that this it's just a random fact.

>I have to go now. I see the people in white suites coming after me.

And after me...

Pablo Massa
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